


so you brought out the best in me

by calcliffbas



Series: Elements 101 [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Bending (Avatar), Character Study, Gen, Light Angst, Minor Aang/Katara, Philosophy, Western Air Temple, chakras
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-16
Updated: 2020-09-16
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:47:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,288
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26500873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calcliffbas/pseuds/calcliffbas
Summary: Aang fiddles with his earlobe and tugs on it. “It’s sort of awkward to talk about.”“Well, it’s, uh. I’m awkward. So that’s cool. Right?”Zuko channels his inner Iroh to try and teach Aang about the elements. It... goes better than he thought it would.
Relationships: Aang & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: Elements 101 [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1926430
Comments: 6
Kudos: 257





	so you brought out the best in me

**Author's Note:**

> I always thought Iroh’s words about the four nations in ‘Bitter Work’ were way too cool to only be used in one episode before being summarily discarded without any further comment. So, here’s a fic and a series that starts to explores them a little!
> 
> Title from Kodaline, ['All I Want'.](https://open.spotify.com/track/0NlGoUyOJSuSHmngoibVAs)  
> Come hang out with me on [Tumblr!](https://calcliffbas.tumblr.com/)

> _‘The Air Nomads detached themselves from worldly concerns and found peace and freedom. Also, they apparently had pretty good senses of humor!’_
> 
> – Iroh, 'Bitter Work'.

Honestly, Zuko’s just happy to count getting out of waterbending training alive as a win. He hadn’t been entirely certain that Katara wouldn’t accidentally brutally impale him with an ice spear in a tragic accident. Accidentally.

He’s still not entirely comfortable with turning his back on her, but he figures that’s what he deserves. He knows she must hate turning her back on him, too, and he understands that.

He wishes that each of them being suspicious of the other _wasn’t_ something else they have in common.

So when Aang approaches him after their training and asked whether Uncle Iroh had said anything else about studying waterbenders, he’s a little bit surprised.

“Uh, a little?” He says, but he rallies to make it sound less like a question and more of a vaguely disinterested aside. His teachers had always had this knack of making him feel like _he_ could answer his questions himself, if only he applied himself and stopped wasting their time, _I have greater interests of greater importance than another question about firebending turtleducks, Prince Zuko_.

And maybe Zuko’s tutors weren’t the _best_ , and he’s definitely leaning more on how Uncle taught him rather than how his tutors at the palace taught him when he’s trying to train the Avatar, but it’s still a pretty engrained understanding he has of how teacher-student dynamics work. The student asks, and the teacher dismisses them.

And on the rare occasion that the student learns a lesson, the teacher makes sure it _sticks_.

“He talked a bit about how all the different elements work,” he offers. “And what people from the different nations are like.”

“I had some friends from the different nations, before,” Aang says. “My friend Bumi? He’s from Omashu, and he’s _crazy_.”

“You know Mad King Bumi?” Zuko asks, interested despite himself. Omashu had held out against the Fire Nation for a hundred years. When he had been the Crown Prince, Zuko had viewed Bumi somewhat like he had seen Sokka during his banishment – an irritant that _somehow_ kept getting the upper hand, escaping destiny and running away from the inevitable.

Now, Zuko feels like maybe _he_ was the irritant, and that’s awkward enough, never mind the existential crisis that comes with renouncing destiny and accepting the inevitable.

Acknowledging _any_ similarity to Sokka challenges Zuko more than destiny ever could.

“Oh, yeah,” Aang nods happily. “He’s a cool guy. Have you ever made glass sculptures, by the way?”

“No,” Zuko says. “I never really had the time.”

He feels kind of bad when he sees the Avatar’s face drop, but Aang rallies quickly enough. “That’s cool! I just thought I’d ask. And I wanted to ask about what your uncle said about wisdom?”

“I’m not sure I’m the right person to ask about wisdom,” Zuko dares to make a joke. Sarcasm. He’s resembling Sokka more every day.

“But you’re my _sifu_ ,” Aang replies dismissively. “You’re pretty good at this stuff.”

In hindsight, instead of daring to make a joke, Zuko should have dared to shake his head and flatly tell Aang to drop the subject.

Because now Aang’s intrigued by this elements stuff, and even Katara is begrudgingly interested. Although Zuko suspects she’s mostly sitting in to make sure he doesn’t kidnap Aang. And that’s fair enough.

He knows he’s still got a long way to go.

But when Toph heard Aang talking about how he was talking with Zuko about Uncle, she seemed pretty eager to join in with the conversation. Turns out, she _loves_ that old guy.

“Yeah,” she says casually. “We met in the middle of nowhere and had a cup of tea together. He seemed cool.”

Zuko isn’t in the least bit surprised that this is the story of how Toph knows Uncle.

So here they all are, with even Sokka choosing to grace them with his presence, although it appears to Zuko that he’s mostly there to heckle.

“Welcome to Elements 101, today our class will be studying Avatar stuff, spirit mumbo-jumbo, yadda, yadda, yadda –”

“Are you the _sifu_ here, Sucker?” Toph asks.

“No,” Sokka replies. “I’m the comic relief guy.”

Toph scoffs. “I’d be more relieved if you shut up.” And she taps her foot and trips Sokka up with a little tremor.

Zuko _loves_ Toph, he really does.

“Let’s just get on with it,” Katara says, looking at Toph like she’s a misbehaving child. Which, to be fair, she is. But Zuko kind of likes that about the earthbender. She’s fun, and even when she punches him, she only does it once. And then she keeps talking to him.

On both counts, Toph is very different to Azula.

“Yeah,” Aang grins, but his attitude seems a lot more anticipatory than Katara’s. “Let’s go, Hotman!”

“Don’t call me that,” Zuko tells him reflexively.

The Bridge between Worlds and the Keeper of the Balance pouts. “I thought you were going to be cool about this elements stuff.”

“I don’t even know what I’m _doing_ with this elements stuff,” Zuko mutters lowly. “Let alone being _cool_.”

“Well, that’s good to hear,” Katara says. “Yet again, Zuko doesn’t think things through.”

“Look, if we’re going to do this whole Elements 101 thing, let’s just do it,” Sokka drawls. “Because otherwise, Haru and Teo were talking about playing Manhunt in the Temple, and I’m missing _out_.”

Zuko is tempted to make a quip about how he’d probably be pretty good at a game called Manhunt, but Katara is right there and she’s already in a bad mood. So, no jokes right now.

He clears his throat instead. “So, uh. When Uncle talked to me about this, we talked about how the four elements work. And how it’s important to get different kinds of wisdom, because otherwise you end up stale.”

“That reminds me,” Sokka says. “Our bread’s kind of stale.”

“Shut up, Sucker,” Toph cuts him off. She blows a strand of her out of her face. “Like being the rock, right, Sparky?”

Zuko will… take her word for it. “I guess?”

Toph scowls irritably at him. “You _guess_. _Duh_. That’s how it works. Earthbenders gotta be the rock. That’s how the element _works_. Otherwise you can’t bend it.”

Zuko nods – he can work with this. “Yeah. And, uh, when Katara bends,” he dares to risk a glance in the waterbender’s direction. “I always – like, I had to fight really hard, but you just gave it back. And it was, like, you moved with the water?”

“Push and pull,” she supplies, though she still doesn’t look happy about it. “Like the tides.”

“Right,” Zuko quickly turns back to Aang. His expression is a lot more welcoming than Katara’s. The fact that he still seems interested in whatever Zuko’s rambling on about seems like a huge plus. “So, uh, obviously benders need to know what their element is like. And _being the Avatar_ ,” Zuko has a sudden burst of inspiration, “Means that you’re able to draw on all four elements, not just one. So it’ll be good for you to, uh – embody? Yeah – _embody_ the four elements. Not just bend them.”

Aang nods enthusiastically. “That sounds like something Monk Gyatso once told me.”

Zuko brightens up at that. It probably means he’s on the right track. “Really?”

“Yeah! He said that I needed to – wait a minute.” Aang clears his throat, hunches his back, squints, and puts on a voice that Zuko suspects only sounds like Monk Gyatso would sound if Monk Gyatso was a screaming sparrowkeet and you were deaf.

“Understand this, young Aang,” the Avatar warbles. “The Avatar does not merely bend the four elements. They must, in fact, understand them. The World Spirit must carry with them the essence of air, water, earth and fire in order to embody the balance they seek to bring.”

He finishes with a proud look around at the group. “That’s what he sounded like.”

“He sounds… cool,” Zuko offers weakly. It’s his attempt at tact.

“He sounds like a kooky old dude,” Toph says, with absolutely no attempt at tact. He’s not sure why he bothers.

“Hey,” Aang protests. “You liked Zuko’s Uncle!”

“Gramps is a kooky old dude, too,” Toph responds, and Zuko can’t really argue with that, fair enough.

“Look, this is great and all,” Sokka interrupts, tracing shapes in the air with his boomerang. “Really glad we can bond over weird old dudes. But what’s this got to do with Avatar stuff?”

Zuko decides that’s a great place to start. “Well, the Avatar keeps the balance, right? That’s why they bend all the elements, so none of them have an unfair advantage.”

“I’m supposed to balance the elements?” Aang frowned and hummed pensively. “I thought I was supposed to use the elements to _keep_ the balance. I didn’t know they were part of the deal.”

“I mean, if you only use one element, that could be bad,” Toph shrugs. “I don’t know if the Earth Kingdom would like an Avatar who only bent fire all the time.”

“Good thing that’s not going to happen,” Katara responds, and _why’s she glaring at Zuko?_ He didn’t even _do_ anything that time!

“But what Toph was saying about being an earthbender makes sense,” Sokka says, and Zuko’s a little bit surprised at how he’s suddenly contributing to the conversation.

“It does?” He asks, caught out by Sokka’s interest in the subject.

Not because Sokka’s not a bender, that would be stupid – but because he’s spent the last ten minutes moaning about how stupid this whole exercise is.

“Yeah,” Sokka waves his hand in the air dismissively. “Yeah, ‘cause Toph’s all ‘I’m the most stubborn earthbender in the world!’, and you’re all ‘being a firebender means I have to be a jerk all the time’. And Aang’s both, so he’s got to balance them.”

“You don’t balance earth and fire,” Katara says. “They’re not opposites. And even opposites can’t be balanced, sometimes.”

Zuko is very grateful for Uncle Iroh’s unfailing patience and love right now, because although Katara’s words are meant to hurt, he understands that it is because he hurt her first.

Uncle had done _nothing_ to deserve Zuko’s words these past three years. He realises that now. Realising things too late is a recurring theme with Zuko. And now he can’t even tell Uncle that he’s sorry. That he’s changed, that he’s better. He doesn’t have any way to make it up to him.

But he _can_ show this group that he’s changed. He can be better for them.

“But you can find a way to balance the elements, right?” He asks Aang. He figures focussing on the young airbender means it will be harder for the others to interrupt with unhelpful comments.

It’ll be difficult, but it’s not impossible. He’s beginning to think _nothing_ is impossible for Toph Beifong.

“Yeah,” he answers, giving Katara an uncertain look. “You can do it through opposites, right? Balancing the opposing elements. Like fire and water, or earth and air.”

“Yeah,” Zuko tells him encouragingly. “Yeah, that’s it. So how would you balance them?”

“By making them work together,” Aang says confidently. “But don’t ask me how,” he adds hastily, a little less confidently. “I’ve got teachers to tell me how that works.”

The only sign that Zuko is amused is the slight smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. If he had played smart with his firebending tutors like that when _he_ was twelve, he would have bought himself fifty hot squats. Not that he would have done them, but, still. The point was that he was a much better sport about it, and Aang had better appreciate that.

“How about fire and air?” Zuko asks instead of dispensing hot squats or fire fists.

Judging by the look of sheer panic on Aang’s face, this exercise in critical thinking is altogether more daunting than hot squats. “What?”

“How would you balance fire and air?” Zuko repeats.

“You can’t,” Katara says confusedly. “They’re not opposites.”

“He’s got to be able to do it,” Sokka says. “He’s the Avatar.”

“Just because he’s the Avatar doesn’t mean he can do stuff like that!” Katara snaps.

“It’s _because_ he’s the Avatar that he can do that stuff,” Toph points out. “Nobody else here can bend four elements.”

“Nobody else can balance elements that aren’t opposites!”

“No, but Aang can.”

Aang blinks at Sokka owlishly. “I can?”

“Sure you can,” Sokka says cheerily. “They aren’t opposites, but they’re counterparts. Basically the same thing!”

Zuko thinks fast, and sketches a shape in the dust with the sole of his boot. “Do you know what this is?”

Toph yawns. “Is that what Sokka’s crazy boomerang looks like?”

“Hey!”

Zuko almost blushes. But he doesn’t. “Sorry, Toph.”

“It’s fine,” she waves him off with the haughty air of a young lady born to nobility. “It’s on the dirt, I can see it.”

“It’s _not_ what my boomerang looks like,” Sokka mutters stubbornly.

“Yeah, yeah, it’s a miracle of aerodynamic engineering,” Toph mocks him airily.

Zuko blocks out the sound of bickering children and looks at Aang. He’s frowning at the symbol, and Zuko gives himself a mental pat on the back.

“Recognise it?”

Aang nods so excitedly, Zuko’s worried for a moment that his head is in danger of blowing off. “Yeah, Hotman! It’s ‘Y’!”

“ _Why?_ ” Sokka groans, slapping his hand to his forehead.

“Yeah!” Aang twists in his seat to look at Sokka. “The Air script is different to the other nations, right?”

Zuko shifts uncomfortably in his own seat. “My tutors said that the Air Nomads used individual characters in their writing, rather than syllables.”

“That’s right, Hotman Zuko,” Aang replies agreeably, ignoring Zuko’s scowl. “We used the _alphabet_ – Gyatso said it offers more flexibility in your spelling, and freedom was such a big deal to the monks. But Tashi always said I had _too_ much freedom, whatever that meant.”

Zuko can understand that, in a vague sort of way. “We use the syllabic _kana_ in the Fire Nation,” he says. “Master Piandao says it’s extremely accurate for transcription, among other things.”

“Ah, logograms,” Sokka drawls. “Such _fascinating_ things.”

Aang nods in agreement, but Zuko suspects the monk has missed the sarcasm.

“Uh, yeah, that’s great, guys,” Sokka mumbles, glancing between Zuko and Aang. “But what I actually meant was – quit it, Toph!” He snaps, waving a hand at the blind girl. “ _Why_ are you throwing pebbles in my ear? _Why?_ ”

Toph bares her teeth in a mocking smile. “ _Funny_.”

Aang manages to avoid smirking by concentrating instead on studying the letter. “Sorry, _sifu_ Zuko. All I can see is one of Sokka’s dumb boomerangs.”

“I’ll show you dumb, Almighty Bridge – _mmph!_ ”

“You’re welcome,” Toph says to the room at large, as she brings the dirtball away from Sokka’s mouth. He glowers at her, but takes the hint. He shuts up, and the room is blissfully silent.

Zuko _loves_ Toph, he really does.

He takes the opportunity to try and keep Aang’s attention. “So, these two points.” He tapped two of the lines on the ‘Y’. “These can be fire and water, right? Opposite, yet balanced.”

“Okay,” Aang says slowly.

Katara folds her arms, but she doesn’t say anything. Zuko tries not to let it get to him as he taps the third point on the shape. “And this is air. It’s the same distance from fire as water,” he gestures at the three points, “And vice versa. But it balances the elements in a different way.”

“So counterparts can be balanced, too,” Sokka said. “Not just opposites.”

Zuko isn’t really sure on that, to be perfectly honest, but that’s kind of where the conversation’s going. Sokka seems to have more of an idea what’s going on than he does, but he tries not to let that get to him. “I guess? I mean, these could be any three elements, it doesn’t have to be air, water and fire. But for now, we can stick to balancing air and fire. If that’s cool?"

Aang seemed to think about it for a moment. “I don’t know. If you tried to make them work together, you’d just fan the flames. It makes fire more powerful, but it doesn’t balance it with air.”

“But that’s just the bending,” Toph says. “You went on that field trip together, right? You’ve got to know something else about fire than just ‘it gets hot’.”

“Look beyond the bending,” Zuko reminds the Avatar, giving him what little advice he can offer _the Avatar_ on keeping the balance. Spirits knows he’s got enough of a balancing act in his own inner self. Good and evil are both so _loud_ sometimes.

“Sense their spirits,” he says softly.

Aang closes his eyes and sits very still for a few moments. And then a little longer. Zuko meditates with the Avatar at sunrise, and it’s always strange to him, to see this energetic little kid remain so still for so long. It must be throwing the others off as well, because Katara is twitching.

Zuko thinks wryly to himself that if he had the power to knock the Avatar unconscious with _meditating_ , he would probably have used that ability before this point.

Aang opens his eyes, and turns to Toph. “In earthbending, you need to be the rock, right?”

“I am the rock,” Toph intones. “I rock. These are facts.”

Aang grins and sends a little gust of wind her way. It blows her bangs out of her eyes and dissipates into nothing. “Best earthbender in the world.”

“Also facts.”

Aang giggles before he settles back down to face Zuko. “Earthbending is being the rock,” he begins hesitantly. “And fire is life.”

“Indeed,” Zuko says, hoping that it makes him sound mysterious and cryptic rather than like he has no idea what he’s talking about.

Is this how Uncle feels half the time?

Aang’s still talking, though, so he can deal with this later.

“So if fire is life, then it’s fuelled by your life. It grounds you. It reminds you what you’re fighting for, even as you’re fighting for it.”

Zuko tilts his head to indicate that the Avatar should continue.

“And if you bend fire by reminding yourself of what grounds you, then – you airbend by freeing yourself of attachments. You need to forget what holds you on the ground.”

Toph turns to Aang. “Is that right?”

Zuko clears his throat. “I read a lot of scrolls when I was, uh, younger. Before you were back.”

Back when he had needed to know _everything_ he could about the Air Nomads, so he was prepared to face a master who would have had a century to learn to wield the elements. Back when he was a thirteen-year-old exile who was too scared of his flame to light a candle.

“The monks _did_ talk a lot about letting go of your earthly attachments,” he mumbles.

Aang brightens up at the thought. “Right! Have you read Gyatso’s _On the Freedom of the Spirit?_ Or how about _Meditations on Bison and Other Subjects_? Oh, man, I remember reading –”

“I, uh, haven’t read those,” Zuko cuts in hastily, before the Avatar can get distracted again. “But I also read a lot of Earth Kingdom treatises about the monks, too.”

“Not Fire Nation?” Katara asks.

“They weren’t very useful,” Zuko mumbles. “A lot of Fire Nation writers thought that the philosophy of Air taught the need to let go of people. But from the way the Earth Kingdom writers saw it, it was more like… the need to let go of your possessions, which in turn helps you become less possessive.”

Zuko had thought the Earth Kingdom had been too sympathetic to a people that didn’t care about familial bonds. He had seen Uncle, his one remaining bond to his homeland, and _burned_ that the nomads could even be _lucky_ enough to have the luxury of not caring.

Now, he was thinking that maybe the Fire Nation had been wrong about this, too.

“But the monks _did_ talk a lot about letting go of people,” Aang says, frowning in confusion. “I remember Guru Pathik saying that I had to let go of my feelings towards – uh, I needed to let go of what I felt towards… certain people I knew.”

Zuko perks up – this is something he can shine a little light on. “I remember there was a polemic written by Monk Tashi against Monk Pasang that argued something like that.”

Aang scowls and folds his arms. “Guru Tashi _would_ argue something like that.”

Zuko isn’t quite sure what he means by that, but from what he could remember of what he’d read in the scroll, Tashi hadn’t been a bunch of laughs. “I think what he said was, um… When you hold on to your emotions, it can affect how those emotions grow. Um, like love, for instance. If you start off being jealous because you want someone’s love for yourself, then that’s not _love_ – that’s just possessiveness.”

Toph makes a noise. “I remember one of my tutors saying something like that.”

“Oh,” Zuko cringes. “Were they, uh… did you not like them?”

“They were okay,” Toph answers. “But, you know, they were my tutor. So they sucked on principle.”

Zuko can understand that. “Yeah, I know what you mean. So, uh – what did they say? Your tutor?”

Toph rolls her eyes and sticks her nose in the air. Zuko imagines that’s what she thinks her tutor must have looked like, and his suspicions are confirmed when she begins to speak in an elegant Earth Kingdom accent. “Love must be selfless, and you must love a person for their soul, not for their body, or for what they may give you. Love does not define itself by possessions, or feelings – but by choice.”

“That sounds kind of monk-y,” Aang offers.

Sokka laughs. “Monkey?”

“Shut up,” Aang mutters peevishly. “It’s a word!”

“Well, yeah, _monkey_ is a word – but _monk-y_ , that’s just –”

“I think what Toph’s tutor was trying to say,” Zuko risks raising his voice, although Katara looks just as fed up with Sokka as he feels. Which, you know, is a plus. “Is that love’s got to be selfless. Like, you have to want the best for another person, even if it doesn’t feel like what’s best for you.”

Uncle had stayed with him for three years, and Zuko had gone back to the Nation in glory whilst he had gone back in chains.

“You’ve got to want what’s best for people,” Sokka says. “Even if you’ve got to let them go.”

Zuko nods. “Yeah.”

Aang scowls. “But that’s not what love feels like!”

“Uh, _what?_ ” Toph says. “Twinkle-Toes, didn’t you _hear_ what I just said about how love isn’t about your feelings?”

But Aang is persistent. “Why would you give up your attachment to people? Why would you let someone go if you love them?”

“Just because you let someone go,” Sokka says harshly, “Doesn’t mean you don’t _love_ them.”

Zuko’s missing something here, but he spots the sudden brightness in Katara’s eyes and the stricken look on Aang’s face.

“Sokka, I’m – I’m really sorry,” the Avatar stammers. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

But it looks like Sokka doesn’t want to hear it. “Just because you do what you _need_ to do instead of what you _want_ to do, it doesn’t mean you don’t _love_ people.”

Aang almost reaches out a hand to Sokka, but he draws it back and fidgets with his fingers in his lap.

Zuko swallows awkwardly. “When I left the Fire Nation to come and join you, I had to give some things up.”

Maybe talking about possessions instead of people will be easier for Sokka.

Katara scoffs. “Oh, yeah? Like what? Your comfy bed and a palace full of servants?”

Zuko had slept on a sheet on the floor in their flat in Ba Sing Se. He hadn’t had servants when he was eating nuts and berries in the Earth Kingdom. He had let go of those things long before he had returned to the Nation.

Maybe talking about people instead of possessions will be easier for Katara.

“Uh, no,” he tries again. “I mean that I needed to give up some people, and leave them behind. Even if I didn’t want to.”

He still feels guilty about that letter. At least he’d started it with _Dear Mai_ , and ended it with _Yours sincerely, Zuko_. At least that meant she knew he still cared, right?

And Zuko tries very hard not to think about the person he had never wanted to leave behind, but who had thought he had given up on them anyway.

_I miss you, Uncle_.

“Like Dad,” Sokka says. His voice is still quiet and a little scratchy, but at least he isn’t crying. Zuko counts that as a win. “He said when he left he couldn’t come home when he still needed to be out there.”

Zuko catches his eye, and there’s a moment of – maybe not _trust_ , not yet, he appreciates that Sokka still hasn’t warmed up to him – but maybe understanding?

“When I was banished, I couldn’t go home unless I found the Avatar,” he says slowly, not looking any of them in the eye. Not because of that…

“But now that I’m a traitor, I can’t go home. Not ever.”

But because of _that_.

He doesn’t want them to see the way he blinks hard.

He’s never going to see the orange sky over the volcanos again, or the way the cherry blossoms sway in the breeze in the early morning.

When Mom left, the turtleducks had been quiet for a week. And now Zuko had left, too.

Were they quiet now?

Did _anyone_ care that he had gone?

Even blind, Toph must see that he’s about to cry, because the pebble she flicks at his head is almost gentle.

“So I’m pretty sure we were talking about balancing the elements,” she says, sharp as a Komodo lizard’s teeth and rough as a tigerdillo’s back. “Isn’t that what we were supposed to be doing when we decided to spend our day wasting our time here?”

Zuko manages to shake himself back to the present. “What?”

“Yeah,” Sokka chimes in. “We were talking about balancing air and fire, right?”

“Oh,” he says dumbly. “Oh, yeah.”

“So, Fancy Dancer,” Toph says, and she flicks another pebble, this time at Aang. “Air. Fire. Balance ‘em. Work your Avatar magic.”

Aang looks at Zuko, but he’s very careful not to meet the airbender’s eye. He’s not sure he wants to see whether the Avatar is looking at him with pity or disappointment or something else.

“If fire is about what grounds you,” Aang begins quietly, “And air is about not letting the wrong things ground you, then you need to be in control of your desires, and not letting them control you. Only then can you balance the elements.”

And, honestly, that sounds _great_ to Zuko, he loves that this kid, this airbending master (because the tattoos are _meaningful_ , they should be honored), this boy he might be able to call a _friend_ is able to understand the elements.

And Zuko likes the way Katara smiles at their student, and the way Toph gives him a round of applause that might even be more on the sincere side rather than sarcastic, and the way Sokka says that it’s _great_ that Aang can balance-bend the elements, ‘cause he was getting _starving_ for a moment there, no, Zuko _does_ like this group, he really does –

But he’s so far from home, and it doesn’t _matter_ right now that he felt more alone in the capital these past few months than he did with Uncle. He doesn’t _care_.

So whilst the others are talking to Aang about this new way of seeing the elements, he quickly slips away and hides in a corner of the Temple where his explorations have taught him that the echoes won’t make their way to the living area.

Because he hates being alone, but he will not let them see him cry.

. . .

“I've been thinking about what you were saying yesterday,” the Avatar says at sunrise. “About how you needed to give up things to do the right thing.”

“Hmm,” Zuko grunts. He would have been perfectly happy to sit and meditate and _not_ talk about the way yesterday’s conversation had gone.

But the Avatar seems to have developed a stubborn streak at the most inopportune occasions, and he sits down opposite Zuko without taking his eyes off him. Zuko takes a moment to reflect on how _fitting_ it is that he spent all that time chasing this kid, and yet he decides that _now_ is the time not to run away.

Things so rarely go Zuko’s way, don’t they?

“You’ve, um,” Aang scratches his knee. “You’ve really given up a lot to teach me firebending, haven’t you?”

Zuko sighs, because _of course_ the monk wants to talk about it. “I dreamt of home for three years. When I was banished.”

“Sometimes I dream of the time my friend Kuzon and I made fruit pies,” Aang replies. “He was getting good at firebending, so sometimes we tried something fancy with the pies and heated up the sugar on top. It turned the sugar brown.”

Zuko isn’t quite sure what to do with that. “I quite like sugar buns.”

Aang beams. “Me too!”

“Right.” Zuko clears his throat. “But, yeah. Home was – sort of a dream for me, you know? And then I got to go home, but… it was still like a dream, sort of. Because it didn’t feel _real_. Things had changed. _I_ had changed. It was what I’d wanted for so long, but it wasn’t right. And I knew I had to give it up.”

“That must have been really hard for you,” Aang observes, and Zuko is struck by the compassion in his voice and his eyes.

The Avatar has no home to return to, because of Zuko’s people. And yet he sits here, with the son of his enemy, and offers him grace.

“I, um,” Zuko offers in return. “I think that’s when I knew what I had to do. When I knew I had to join you. I had to do _something_ , and… I knew I couldn’t do it at home. So I knew I had to do it somewhere that wasn’t home. And the only thing I knew that wasn’t home was – was you. So… I left.”

He bows his head and swallows hard, and prays to Agni that _he will not cry_ in front of his student.

“When I was at the Eastern Air Temple, a guru told me I had to give something up to unlock my chakras and be able to go into the Avatar State.”

Zuko blinks hard, but focusses harder on the conversation. It’s easier to deal with than the thoughts rattling around in his head. “The Eastern Air Temple?”

Aang nods. “He gave me onion and banana juice.”

“I, um. Hope you didn’t try and mix that into your fruit pies.”

The Avatar pulls a face. “That’s _gross_ , Hotman.”

Zuko feels an unwilling smile tug at his mouth, but squashes the urge. He is _not_ twelve years old.

Or maybe he just had to grow up fast, and he hasn’t been a child since he was thirteen.

“What did he want you to give up?” He asks instead. “Maybe that’s what we were talking about yesterday.”

Aang fiddles with his earlobe and tugs on it. “It’s sort of awkward to talk about.”

Zuko allows himself one smile. _One_. “Well, it’s, uh. I’m awkward. So that’s cool. Right?”

The Avatar laughs a little, a high-pitched giggling sound. “Yeah, Zuko. You kind of are.”

“Right,” Zuko nods. He can take a little joke. He’s taken a lot worse from the universe. Maybe this is the universe holding back for once. “So – what did the guru say to you?”

Aang blew out his cheeks. “He told me that I had to let go of someone I cared about. And that was really weird for me, because _earlier_ he’d told me that love was the key to unlocking my fourth chakra. But now he was telling me to let go of my earthly attachments. So that was confusing, because if I loved – uh, this person, then why would I let go of her?”

Zuko stares at Aang for a little while as he thinks. He signed up to teach firebending, he thinks. Maybe do a little bit of apologising to their group, a bit of menial work to pitch in and show he wants to be there. But, predominantly, he was there to teach the Avatar _firebending_.

Dealing with the Avatar’s love life does not come under firebending!

But he’s here, he realises with an inward groan. And he’s here _now_ , whilst everyone else is still in bed. And judging from how Sokka was acting yesterday, he doesn’t really think that Sokka would want to have a conversation with Aang that revolves around love, and want, and need. That seems like a pretty sore spot.

And Toph is _twelve_ , and she spends half her time asking Sokka to carry her around the Temple and half her time tripping him up when he refuses to do so. So she might not be the right person to ask about romance.

Not to mention that her approach to most _unimportant_ things is to throw a boulder at them. Her approach to something like _unlocking the Avatar State_ would probably involve throwing _Aang_ at a _boulder_.

And that left Katara, and even if Zuko was on speaking terms with her, he’s not _dumb_. Or blind.

The Avatar loves someone, and Katara is an attractive young woman.

So, Zuko resigns himself to the situation, and resignedly realises that it’s on _him_ to deal with this, and he accepts, with great resignation, that it’s on _just_ him.

“We said yesterday that letting go of your attachments doesn’t mean forgetting what you care about,” he reminds Aang. “I had to let go of my attachment to my girl – uh, to someone, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about them. It just means that I cared about what I needed to do _more_. You know?”

Aang shifts in his meditative position. “Um. When I saw a vision that this person was in trouble, I ran away from the guru and my chakra lesson and tried to go after them.”

Zuko winces. “Oh.”

“Um, yeah.”

“That’s… not what I was talking about.”

“But I didn’t know what else to do!” Aang bursts out. “I _love_ her, and it’s not fair for me to have to give her up! I have _dreams_ about her, like – like you dreamt about home!”

And Zuko doesn’t really know what to say about that. He’d dreamt about home, but… he’d never dreamt about _Mai_.

He’d dreamt about the sunsets and the cherry trees, and he’d dreamt about the turtleducks, and once he had woken up with the salt from his tears burning his still-fresh wound because he had dreamt of Father’s hand warm _but not burning_ on his shoulder _but not his face_.

But he had never dreamt of Mai like that. He _has_ never dreamt of Mai like that.

And when he had chosen… he hadn’t chosen Mai.

“Sometimes,” he says, feebly reaching for what Uncle might have said. “Sometimes, to do what’s right, we need to be steady. And give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams.”

And as he says it, he feels it, like the coals of his inner fire have been warmed a little bit more brightly. He _feels_ the sense of rightness.

_This is where I am meant to be_.

“Be steady, Aang.”

The Avatar isn’t happy with his words, he can tell. He sympathises. He has not granted Aang absolution, he has not offered him the freedom he craves. He is a _boy_ , he is twelve years old and he has been forced into a destiny he never dreamt of.

After his father’s coronation, after the new Crown Prince Zuko had taken off the white robes, _after Mother_ , Zuko had sat by the pond and cried until he had retched.

The Avatar is not fortunate, to live in these times. But Zuko has never cared for fortune.

_I’ve always had to struggle and fight, and that’s made me strong. It’s made me who I am_.

So he sits and waits as Aang wrestles with himself, with his destiny, with what he wants and what he needs, and he remembers leaving a letter and speaking his mind, and he sympathises.

“Toph says that I need to be more like a rock,” Aang says eventually. His voice is quiet, and he almost mumbles. “She says I need to face my problems head on.”

“I heard Toph’s pretty smart,” Zuko says.

Aang manages a shaky laugh. “Who told you _that?_ ”

He must be thinking of Sokka or Katara. Zuko has a trick up his sleeve. “Toph.”

That startles a genuine laugh out of Aang. “I guess she _would_ say that.”

They settle down to meditate, and Zuko allows himself one extra smile.

He can’t go home, and he doesn’t know if they’ll win, and more than one person here probably wants to kill him, and at least half the people here _definitely_ don’t trust him.

But yesterday was a good lesson, and Aang still wants to learn from him today.

That’s something worth smiling about, he thinks.

**Author's Note:**

> Dedicated to Tim.
> 
> “Sometimes, to do what’s right, we need to be steady. And give up the thing we want the most. Even our dreams” is a quote from _Spider-Man 2_ (2004). Any other recognisable quotes are from _A:TLA_.


End file.
